Take Care With Those Hints!

When I was a newbie genealogist I loved the hints that Ancestry.com provided.  Now all of the online sites offer the same.  I was surprised to recently hear that a colleague of mine still happily accepts every hint that is shown.  Her reasoning was that she could always sort out later if something was amiss.

"Later"  like in never is what I say.  Here's a perfect example of why you need to be careful of those hints:

The hint above flagged for my uncle, George Joseph Kos who did live in northern Indiana and was born in 1921.  Family stories say that, although his attendance area high school was Lew Wallace in Gary, he somehow un-enrolled himself and re-enrolled in another high school at the urging of a football coach.  Of course, his parents found out about it and my grandmother was livid with all parties - the zoned school who allowed a minor to remove himself, the new school and coach for enrolling  him without permission and my uncle, well, for being my uncle.  So, the hint looks legit.

My trusting colleague would have clicked "save" while I would have clicked "ignore" if I didn't have time to check it out.  Ignore is a way to really save the hint to look at later while getting the leaf to disappear.

Now I'm going to analyze if this is a correct document for my uncle so I click "Review" on the hint and this displays:

Wow, that does look legit.  According to the family story, it was Roosevelt High School where he wanted to play football but  he was 15 when that happened.  I could rationalize that he was 15-16 years old during the 1936-1937 yearbook so the age is feasible.  But Roosevelt High School was in Gary, not East Chicago, a nearby town.  Could the towns boundaries have changed?  We see that so often in genealogy.  I'm still wary so I'd click view and this is what is displayed:

So, the Hint was really for a George KOSTIN not George Kos.  This was not my uncle. Then I remember, there were two Roosevelt High Schools.  Duh!

Hints are just that - hints - they are not guaranteed correct information.  Use with caution.